“Nothing too exciting. My craziest class is going to be structural engineering.”
I cock my head at him. “Structural engineering? That sounds serious.” I narrow my eyes at him suspiciously. “Are you picking a major?”
He does his laugh/exhale thing. “I’m thinking about architecture.”
“You want to be an architect? When did this happen?”
“I like building things. I was killer with Lincoln Logs as a kid.” He shrugs. “It makes a kind of sense, so I thought I’d go for it, try it out, tackle all the math and physics and drawing and see if at the end of all that I still like the idea.”
He’s not looking directly at me, but I can tell he’s watching to see how I’ll react. Whether I’ll think it’s silly, to be going toward something so heavy as architecture, whether I’ll laugh picturing him in a suit and a hard hat with a roll of blueprints under his arm.
I think it’s hot. I jostle my shoulder into his. “That’s amazing. It sounds … perfect.”
“What about you?” he asks. “Still going strong on premed?”
“Yep. I’m taking a biochemistry class called Genomics and Medicine, which I’m pretty sure is going to blow my mind.”
“What else?” he asks. “No more happiness?”
I sigh. “No more happiness. Just the normal prereqs and premed and, uh, some PE class.”
He catches my attempt to slide that by him. “Clara, what PE class?” He fishes it out of my mind. “You’re taking fencing? That’s cheating.”
“Hey, nobody ever said that we can’t train on our own time.”
He sits back, looks at me like I’m more devious than he thought. “I’m going to sign up for that class, too. When is it?”
“Monday and Wednesday, one to two p.m.”
He nods like it’s all settled, then. “So we’ll run in the mornings, and spar in the afternoons.”
“Okay.”
“And don’t make plans for next weekend,” he adds.
I look up at him. “Why not?”
The corner of his mouth lifts. He pins me with a gaze that would turn any red-blooded girl’s legs to jelly. “I am taking you out. On a date. Before things get crazy.”
My heart beats faster. “Dinner and a movie,” I remember.
“Friday night,” he says. “I’ll pick you up at seven.”
“Seven,” I repeat with a stupid quiver in my voice. “Friday.”
He goes to the door and starts putting on his coat.
“Where are you going?”
“Home. I have to prepare,” he says.
“For Friday?”
“For everything,” he replies. “I’ll see you at the Farm.”
“You’re speeding,” Angela says.
I don’t have to check the speedometer to know she’s right. I’m nervous about how she’s going to take the whole “maybe the seventh is your baby” thing. We’ve driven all day, about to find a hotel for the night, and still I haven’t worked up the nerve to broach the subject.
“I didn’t know you had a speeding problem,” she remarks. “You’re usually a decent driver, when you’re not crashing into angels, that is. You’re a rule follower.”
Which of course she makes sound like an insult. “Gee, thanks.”
She returns to the parenting magazine she’s reading. She’s been researching this baby thing with the same kind of passion she usually reserves for angel stuff. What she keeps stashed under her pillow lately is a dog-eared copy of What to Expect When You’re Expecting. And a three-hundred-year-old tome that has a passage about a woman giving birth to a Nephilim. Just a little light reading.
“So, how was your break?” she asks, and smiles suggestively. “Did you get to blow off some steam with Christian?”
I ignore her obvious innuendo. “We spent some time at the beach.”
She gazes at the window wistfully, where outside the sky has darkened to a deep, beguiling blue; her hands rest on the swell of her stomach. I wonder when the last time was, when she did anything but worry.
“Ange, we need to talk.”
“We could talk about why you’re not with Christian,” she suggests.
“How about we not talk about that, but say we did?”
“What’s the holdup, C?” she continues like she didn’t hear me. “He’s hot, he’s hot for you, he’s available, and wait, hold on …” Her golden eyes widen theatrically. “Aren’t you available now?”
I hate that I’m blushing.
“And let’s not forget that he’s your destiny. Your purpose or whatever. Your guy. So make out with him already. Just be, with him. In a horizontal sort of way, like you said.”
“Thank you, Angela,” I say wryly. “This is so illuminating.”
“Sorry,” she says, although she’s clearly not in the least bit sorry. “I get annoyed watching the two of you torture yourselves.”
Here I started out determined to talk about her, and we’re talking about me. I let her change the subject for the moment, but I’m determined to get back around to this whole baby situation.
“We’re not—” I sigh. “It’s complicated. We don’t want to be together because somebody told us that we have to be.”
“And by ‘somebody’ you mean God, right?”
Of course it sounds insanely arrogant of me, insisting on a relationship on my own terms, when she puts it like that.
“It’s not so complicated,” she says. “You want to be together all on your own. It’s obvious, especially for him. Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed the way he looks at you, like he’d kiss the ground you walk on if he thought it would win you over.”
“I know,” I admit softly. “But—”
“But you’re still hung up on the cowboy.”
I check my mirrors. “I don’t want to bounce out of one relationship and right into another. Christian and I have time to become whatever it is that we’re meant—that we decide to be.”
“You don’t want him to be your rebound,” she says thoughtfully. “How very adult of you.”
“Thanks. I’m trying, here.” I change lanes, then speed up to pass a motor home that’s moseying along the freeway.
“But maybe you don’t have time,” she says, the first time she’s acknowledged what I told her about my vision. “And it’s been months since you ended it with Tucker, hasn’t it?” she points out.
Okay, that’s it. Enough discussion about me. “So how come you get to mandate that we don’t talk about your love life and then jump straight into talking about mine? That hardly seems fair,” I say.
Her whole body tenses. “I don’t have anything to say about Pierce. He’s a sweet guy.”
“I’m sure he is. But you’re not in love with him. And he’s not the father of your baby, right?”
She scoffs. “Come on, C. We’ve been over this.”
“I get why you’re saying that he is,” I tell her. “I understand, really, I do. I don’t know if it’s the best thing to do to Pierce, but I get it. You’re protecting your baby. The way my mom tried to protect Jeffrey and me by letting us think my dad was of the regular deadbeat variety.”
She looks into her lap. She’s determined not to admit it. Not to anybody. She made a promise to herself, a commitment to the idea of Pierce as the baby daddy, and she’s not going to break that for anybody. Not even for me. It’s safer that way.
“Okay, fine, be that way,” I say.
I’ll have to let her figure it out herself. But there’s nothing wrong with me helping.
I turn on the radio, and we listen without talking for a while, both of us deep in thought. I come up with a new approach. “Hey, you remember how I kept seeing that bird around campus, and it turned out to be Samjeeza?”
“Yes,” she says lightly, relieved because she thinks I’m changing the subject. “What happened with him, anyway? Is he still stalking you?”
“I threw a rock at him a few weeks ago, and I haven’t seen him since.”
“You threw a rock at a Black Wing?” she says, impressed. “Whoa, C.”
“I was mad. It was probably a mistake. He knows I’m a Triplare, and maybe I pissed him off enough that he’ll decide to tell Asael about me.”